If you think tequilas are all the same, then you haven’t experienced Taco Mucho’s monthly tastings.
One Saturday afternoon each month, the Oak Park restaurant, located at 220 Harrison St., hosts tastings of distinguished tequilas. Last month, Mijenta Tequilas were featured, along with the brand ambassador who explained the process of making this high-end liquor.
It is all part of Taco Mucho owner Ron Aleman’s effort to present authentic Mexican offerings at the restaurant he opened in 2021. A family friend suggested that in parallel with his authentic foods, Aleman take a deeper dive into more craft-made drinks.
Now, one Saturday per month Taco Mucho features tastes from a different tequila manufacturer. Upcoming offerings are announced on the restaurant’s Instagram page.
“I just love the sense of community that brings. We sit here. We let people have some samples and we talk,” Aleman said.
Taco Mucho caught the eye of the Great Lakes Tequila Club. The organization, which is free to join, is a tequila appreciation society with more than a thousand members. Taco Mucho is on its list of the eight best bars in the region for tequila – what they call a tequila hotspot
Because of his growing awareness of high-quality tequila, Aleman reached out to the makers of Mijenta Tequila to see if they wanted to host an event.
Bradley Bolt, who works for Altos Planos Collective, the maker of Mijenta, knew right away that this was a good fit for their brand.
“Ron cares about the bar and what they’re serving. It’s just more of like an all-natural approach and very casual and it’s sort of the same mentality,” Bolt said.
At the July 13 event, Bradley described the process for creating their liquor as clean and farm-to-bottle. No herbicides or pesticides are used. They open-air ferment using wild yeast and distill twice, resting the liquid for two weeks afterwards. The company is a certified B corporation, which means it meets a higher bar when it comes to social and environmental standards.
While Bolt doesn’t disparage other tequilas on the market, he wanted to bring this more connoisseur offering to people’s attention.
“Education is paramount,” he said. “I really just try to go and explain what our tequila is, why we think what we’re doing is important.” A sip with no ice or other accompaniment is a great way to get that message across Bolt said.
Aleman came out of culinary school in the early 2000s with a head of steam and a dream to cook in the best fine dining kitchens.
“I got to work underneath some pretty great chefs,” Aleman said. “I got to move around the country. I was in New York. I was in Pittsburgh. I was in Arizona.”
Despite those experiences, it was a trip to visit his in-laws for the first time in Mexico that opened his eyes to what he really wanted to do. Aleman had grown up with Mexican food at home. He felt lucky to have eaten his mom’s homemade tortillas and from the hands of other very good cooks.
“But when I eat the food down there in Mexico, like inland Mexico, not on the ocean, not at a resort, but like this is like a little town. I was just blown away,” Aleman said.
He called it a spiritual awakening. He immediately started taking notes and imagining what the menu would be like at his own place. He opened a restaurant in 2019 in Chicago’s Fulton Market neighborhood. It was able to hang on for six months into the pandemic, then he had to close. But once Aleman had a taste of running his own shop, he was hooked.
Aleman’s wife, Zintia Gonzalez, grew up in Berwyn and when they were ready to start a family, she wanted to live in Oak Park. It was here that he took his next run at opening a restaurant. Taco Mucho opened in 2021.
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More Info:
tacomucho.net
instagram.com/tacomucho_op
greatlakestequilaclub.com
mijenta-tequila.com